I Smoked Marijuana for 17 Years. One Terrifying Night With My Son Made Me Quit, But I’m Still Recovering

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Convinced smoking was cool like the alluring Virginia Slims ads promised, I spent hours in front of the mirror with a cigarette dangling from my lips, practicing a slow, sophisticated inhale that always ended in a coughing fit. Cigarettes were just the warmup. Enjoying our freedom as latchkey kids, my friends and I gathered after school to watch General Hospital and get high. As the months passed, smoking pot was no longer an experiment. It was a ritual, blessed with incense and Visine. I came out of the womb anxious. Walking into a room full of people, my heart raced, and a gnawing dread forced me to hover near the door for a quick exit. The only time that terror melted away was when I was high. Cannabis became my savior, the thing I turned to more than anything else. For a few hours, I'd feel giddy, free of my insecurities and comfortable in my own skin. But it always rushed back once I came down. The relief felt as urgent and necessary as breathing. I spent every dollar from my paper route and babysitting jobs chasing that feeling. Gradually, I lit up more and more on my own, several times a day, with Scorpions and KISS blaring on my Walkman. I avoided home as much as possible. My parents divorced, then remarried before my birth. If they hadn't, I wouldn't have been born. Many times I wished I wasn't. They taped a note on the fridge: "Don't ask why." I learned to tread lightly around my father, quick to anger and convinced children should be seen and not heard. When I was 16, my parents split for good. My father stayed in New York; my mom, two brothers and I headed west, towing a tiny camper we dubbed "The Nutshell." I rode most of the way to Seattle on the back of my eldest brother's motorcycle. I was already homesick before we even crossed the New York state line. I arrived at my new school in jeans, sneakers and a concert T-shirt, desperately trying to fit in. The girls wore dresses, heels and full makeup as if they'd stepped out of a fashion shoot. Then I spotted the stoner girls in jeans and T-shirts like mine. A fish out of water for sure, but I'd found my tribe. More than a decade passed. By the '90s, I was a single mother, putting myself through nursing school and later culinary arts training, all while immersed in Seattle's grunge music scene. Weed and cigarettes were my most faithful companions. I tried quitting many times but always caved after a few days of edginess and insomnia. I smoked bowls and bongs at home, kept a one-hitter in my purse for traveling, and went in on $200 ounces or paid $40 for an eighth whenever I ran out. I never thought of myself as an addict. During pregnancy, I resolved to stay clean, but weeks after my son's birth, I was getting high again. My baby's father was already long gone. My mother pitched in with childcare while I pulled double shifts at a rehab facility. Then one of my first nursing patients gave me a glimpse into the grim reality of addiction. She survived throat cancer, but surgeons removed her voice box, leaving a permanent hole in her neck called a stoma, which she smoked cigarettes through. I saw myself in her and was horrified by how far addiction could go. As the years passed, I endured recurring bouts of bronchitis, a constant sore throat, and coughed up what resembled coffee grounds. None of that scared me enough to stop. My son was 10, and one night, he found me unconscious in the kitchen after a heavy bong session, dinner still on the stove. Terrified, he ran next door. When I came to, a neighbor knelt over me, and my son yelled, "Mom, mom, mom." The second I saw his face, I knew. That was the moment I decided to quit. I wasn't ready for formal treatment. Instead, I white-knuckled it. My anxiety soared at the mere thought of withdrawal. But my son needed me sober. I loved the Seattle rain in those early days of sobriety because it matched my mood. Even the fog hanging over the city was fitting. Headaches, insomnia, irritability and a flat, unmotivated dread were my new normal. The brain fog finally cleared after many months. My focus returned first, then my memory. I hadn't realized how much I'd lost until then. A decade after quitting, depression hit me like a freight train. Twice, it was so severe that I made a plan to end my life. Both times, I spent a week in the hospital and needed medication to recover. I later read research linking adolescent cannabis use with an increased risk of depression in young adulthood. While not all marijuana users will have the same experience as me, I wondered in what other ways 17 years of cannabis use may have scarred me. The anxiety I was born with never subsided. Eventually, it became worse than before I ever lit up. It took years of psychiatric care, medication and more than one difficult withdrawal before I could function again. Sometimes I think about my friend's basement. The cannabis sold today is nothing like what I smoked then. The potency has skyrocketed. At 13, with a brain still developing, I had no clue what getting high would cost me decades later. We hear about teens hospitalized from high-THC cannabis or cannabis-induced psychosis, but stories like mine fly under the radar. I wonder who I might have become had I not spent so many years escaping inside a cloud of smoke. My son is grown now. We've reconciled those years and the memories I wish he didn't have. Thirty years sober, I'm still learning how to live with the anxiety I buried with drugs. Recovery didn't end when I snuffed out the joint. Before an event, I often sit in my car for five minutes, working up the nerve to walk inside. Other nights my racing mind wakes me at 3 a.m., and I toss and turn for hours. Some days, reframing my thoughts and leaning on skills learned through therapy is enough. Other days, I pull the covers over my head and disappear into sleep, reaching for the same escape I did at 13, just safer now. I once stood in front of a mirror with a Marlboro dangling from my lips, feigning confidence. At 59, I can look at the woman staring back at me without a cigarette or joint, without faking confidence I don't feel. I'm still anxious, but these days I can walk into a room without needing anything to get me through the door. Monica Romano is a former nurse working on an addiction memoir. All views expressed in this article are the author's own. Do you have a personal essay you want to share with Newsweek? Send your story to [email protected] Monica Romano0ShareNewsweek is a Trust Project memberSee more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.”Here, take a hit,” my friend said, passing me a joint in her basement rec room in upstate New York. It was 1980, the year John Lennon was shot. I was 13 and clueless about how that first toke would impact the rest of my life. I didn’t even know how to inhale.

Convinced smoking was cool like the alluring Virginia Slims ads promised, I spent hours in front of the mirror with a cigarette dangling from my lips, practicing a slow, sophisticated inhale that always ended in a coughing fit.

Enjoying our freedom as latchkey kids, my friends and I gathered after school to watch General Hospital and get high. As the months passed, smoking pot was no longer an experiment. It was a ritual, blessed with incense and Visine.

I came out of the womb anxious. Walking into a room full of people, my heart raced, and a gnawing dread forced me to hover near the door for a quick exit. The only time that terror melted away was when I was high.

Cannabis became my savior, the thing I turned to more than anything else.

For a few hours, I’d feel giddy, free of my insecurities and comfortable in my own skin. But it always rushed back once I came down. The relief felt as urgent and necessary as breathing.

I spent every dollar from my paper route and babysitting jobs chasing that feeling.

Gradually, I lit up more and more on my own, several times a day, with Scorpions and KISS blaring on my Walkman. I avoided home as much as possible.

My parents divorced, then remarried before my birth. If they hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been born. Many times I wished I wasn’t. They taped a note on the fridge: “Don’t ask why.” I learned to tread lightly around my father, quick to anger and convinced children should be seen and not heard. When I was 16, my parents split for good. My father stayed in New York; my mom, two brothers and I headed west, towing a tiny camper we dubbed “The Nutshell.” I rode most of the way to Seattle on the back of my eldest brother’s motorcycle.

I was already homesick before we even crossed the New York state line.

I arrived at my new school in jeans, sneakers and a concert T-shirt, desperately trying to fit in. The girls wore dresses, heels and full makeup as if they’d stepped out of a fashion shoot. Then I spotted the stoner girls in jeans and T-shirts like mine. A fish out of water for sure, but I’d found my tribe.

More than a decade passed. By the ’90s, I was a single mother, putting myself through nursing school and later culinary arts training, all while immersed in Seattle’s grunge music scene. Weed and cigarettes were my most faithful companions. I tried quitting many times but always caved after a few days of edginess and insomnia. I smoked bowls and bongs at home, kept a one-hitter in my purse for traveling, and went in on $200 ounces or paid $40 for an eighth whenever I ran out.

During pregnancy, I resolved to stay clean, but weeks after my son’s birth, I was getting high again.

My baby’s father was already long gone. My mother pitched in with childcare while I pulled double shifts at a rehab facility.

Then one of my first nursing patients gave me a glimpse into the grim reality of addiction. She survived throat cancer, but surgeons removed her voice box, leaving a permanent hole in her neck called a stoma, which she smoked cigarettes through. I saw myself in her and was horrified by how far addiction could go. As the years passed, I endured recurring bouts of bronchitis, a constant sore throat, and coughed up what resembled coffee grounds.

My son was 10, and one night, he found me unconscious in the kitchen after a heavy bong session, dinner still on the stove. Terrified, he ran next door. When I came to, a neighbor knelt over me, and my son yelled, “Mom, mom, mom.” The second I saw his face, I knew. That was the moment I decided to quit. I wasn’t ready for formal treatment. Instead, I white-knuckled it. My anxiety soared at the mere thought of withdrawal. But my son needed me sober.

I loved the Seattle rain in those early days of sobriety because it matched my mood. Even the fog hanging over the city was fitting. Headaches, insomnia, irritability and a flat, unmotivated dread were my new normal. The brain fog finally cleared after many months. My focus returned first, then my memory. I hadn’t realized how much I’d lost until then.

A decade after quitting, depression hit me like a freight train. Twice, it was so severe that I made a plan to end my life. Both times, I spent a week in the hospital and needed medication to recover. I later read research linking adolescent cannabis use with an increased risk of depression in young adulthood.

While not all marijuana users will have the same experience as me, I wondered in what other ways 17 years of cannabis use may have scarred me.

The anxiety I was born with never subsided. Eventually, it became worse than before I ever lit up. It took years of psychiatric care, medication and more than one difficult withdrawal before I could function again.

Sometimes I think about my friend’s basement. The cannabis sold today is nothing like what I smoked then. The potency has skyrocketed. At 13, with a brain still developing, I had no clue what getting high would cost me decades later. We hear about teens hospitalized from high-THC cannabis or cannabis-induced psychosis, but stories like mine fly under the radar.

I wonder who I might have become had I not spent so many years escaping inside a cloud of smoke. My son is grown now. We’ve reconciled those years and the memories I wish he didn’t have.

Thirty years sober, I’m still learning how to live with the anxiety I buried with drugs. Recovery didn’t end when I snuffed out the joint. Before an event, I often sit in my car for five minutes, working up the nerve to walk inside. Other nights my racing mind wakes me at 3 a.m., and I toss and turn for hours. Some days, reframing my thoughts and leaning on skills learned through therapy is enough. Other days, I pull the covers over my head and disappear into sleep, reaching for the same escape I did at 13, just safer now.

I once stood in front of a mirror with a Marlboro dangling from my lips, feigning confidence. At 59, I can look at the woman staring back at me without a cigarette or joint, without faking confidence I don’t feel. I’m still anxious, but these days I can walk into a room without needing anything to get me through the door.

Monica Romano is a former nurse working on an addiction memoir.

All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Do you have a personal essay you want to share with Newsweek? Send your story to [email protected].